NatWest Three puzzle

Whatever happens to the NatWest Three, facing imminent extradition to the United States under the disgraceful non-reciprocal UK-US treaty, I'm still puzzled by the law lords' refusal even to hear their appeal. The high court judges who originally ruled in favour of extradition had certified that there was a "point of law of general public importance" involved - the necessary criterion for being eligible to bring an appeal before the House of Lords.

The three law lords who sit as a committee deciding whether to hear a case do not give reasons when they decline to do so. They may have thought that the point of law was not - contrary to the high court judges' view - of general public importance. Or perhaps they thought the legal point, although important, was so clearly against the Natwest Three that it was not worth their lordships' time listening to full arguments. Whatever their reasons, I find their decision not to hear the appeal curious. The men's liberty, possibly for many years, is at stake. The three were entitled to expect they would at least have the chance to put their case.

Last week I commented on the fact that the inquiry into the collapsed Jubilee line fraud trial (£25m down the drain) had not interviewed the judge in the case. She had refused to give evidence. As a result, Stephen Wooler, the chief inspector of the Crown Prosecution Service, who conducted the inquiry, said that he was prevented from passing any comments about her handling of the case. Yet that aspect of the trial was central; many commentators had focused on her apparent failure to manage the trial adequately.

But was Wooler as restricted in criticising her as he claims? If there is a constitutional convention giving judges immunity from criticism if they refused to cooperate with an inquiry into one of their trials, there is at least one spectacular case in which it was breached. In 1990, Sir John May published an interim report into the miscarriage of justice suffered by the Maguire Seven, wrongly convicted of various IRA-linked terrorism offences. The trial judge was Sir John, later Lord, Donaldson. He refused to give evidence to the May inquiry. That did not prevent Sir John May from criticising him in the strongest terms.

Anyway, there should be no such bar on interviewing a judge who is alleged to have in some way mishandled a controversial trial. I go further. Judges should always subject themselves to questioning in such cases. They should not be allowed to "decline" to be interviewed. The only question is, by whom? I can understand the argument for some form of peer review, as suggested by Stephen Wooler. Judges should be entitled to argue that only another judge could fully understand their difficulties and dilemmas. Fine. Let every investigation into an allegedly botched trial allow the judge involved to be questioned by a fellow judge, who would then feed the contents into the main inquiry.

There's a US website called dontdatehimgirl.com which, as its name suggests, allows women to warn others against going out with named men. Todd Hollis of Pittsburgh, one such alleged rubbish date, is suing the website and its owner for libel, claiming that his reputation has been harmed by women lying about him. He is, I need hardly add, a lawyer.